Here, a step-by-step guide to making your period in quarantine as Vreeland-esque as possible.
Vreeland famously inspired the character of magazine editor Maggie Prescott in Funny Face (1957), starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire
Redecorate your entire house in a single bold colour
Vreeland famously adored the colour red, and had her Vogue office painted scarlet before filling it with Rigaud candles and papering the walls with images of everything from Japanese kites to Maria Callas. (The perfect shade, according to her, was the colour of a “child’s cap in any Renaissance portrait”.) Meanwhile, at her home on Park Avenue, Vreeland had interior designer Billy Baldwin create an all-red living room “like a garden, but a garden in hell” in 1955. She adored monochrome in any colour, however. As she suggested in her column, “Why don’t you have every room done up in every colour green? A melange of plants, green glass, green porcelains, and furniture covered in sad greens, gay greens, clear, faded and poison greens?”
Write as much correspondence by hand as possible
While Vreeland’s secretaries followed her everywhere – frantically typing out her constant diktats, witticisms and memos – she herself eschewed typewriters, preferring instead to write by hand in emerald-green Chinese ink. “Has anyone ever written a great love letter on a typewriter?” she asked. “A great suicide note?”
Study your history – fashion and otherwise
After leaving American Vogue in 1971, Vreeland became a consultant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art – breathing fresh life into its Costume Institute with her encyclopaedic knowledge of fashion and paving the way for the Met Gala in the process. She started by devoting an exhibition to the world of Balenciaga in 1973 – a place in which evening gowns were “made for pretty rooms, filled with flowers and lit by candles”, as she told The New York Times at the opening. And while Vreeland frequently turned to designers for inspiration, she had no problem looking beyond legendary houses. It was while admiring a p*rnographic Pompeian fresco during a trip to Italy that she noted a Roman slave’s thong sandals – and promptly had them reproduced by her shoemaker, inventing the flip-flop in the process.
Conduct your affairs primarily from the bath
Vreeland’s mornings were invariably spent answering correspondence in bed – before retreating to the bathroom, sometimes for hours at a stretch. True to her first conversation with Snow, she rarely got dressed before noon. Her former assistants recalled how, when in Paris, her team would move into a suite at the Hôtel de Crillon, which kept her personal bed linens on hand for her visits. After a morning cup of tea, she would get into an enormous bath, from which she would call every leading photographer of the day who was on assignment for Vogue.
Reconsider your standard working lunch
Vreeland famously ate the same lunch every day: a peanut butter and marmalade sandwich on wholewheat bread, followed by a glass of scotch or vodka. (“Peanut butter,” the editor-in-chief solemnly declared, “is the greatest invention since Christianity.”) There was nothing slap-dash about the presentation of her deceptively humble go-to meal, however. During her tenure at American Vogue, Vreeland would provide her assistants with a diagram of the exact way in which her lunch was to be set out – from the cutlery to the ashtrays. She was also known to enjoy having peanut butter by itself as a snack, served on K’ang Hsi porcelain and eaten with a silver spoon.
Force your colleagues to dress in uniform for your next Zoom call
When Vreeland did turn up to the Condé Nast offices in the Graybar Buildings around noon, she famously issued memos to staff left, right and centre – including decrees about the sartorial theme for the day ahead. “Today, let’s think pig white!” read one. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have stockings that were pig white! The colour of baby pigs, not quite white and not quite pink!”
Remember that luxury is a state of mind
Many of Vreeland’s “Why Don’t You” columns bordered on the ridiculous – and were even satirised in The New Yorker in 1938. One of her suggestions included: “Why don’t you consider for your beauty, the creams made by Brother Carolus of Salzburg, who is an apostle of the Apollonian Creed, which advocates bodily beauty as the first duty to God?” Others, however, are surprisingly achievable – and a good way to lift your mood in this particular historical moment. It’s hard to feel too blue while “wafting a big bouquet about like a fairy wand” or “tying black tulle bows on your wrists”. Another one of her tips to consider putting into practice? “Cover a big cork bulletin board in bright pink felt banded with bamboo, and pin with coloured thumb-tacks all your various enthusiasms as your life varies from week to week…”
